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When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron again brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother or at anyone in particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry out such a plan in which the enemy's position was assumed to be known, whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement.
Weyrother had been twice that evening to the enemy's picket line to reconnoiter personally, and twice to the Emperors, Russian and Austrian, to report and explain, and to his headquarters where he had dictated the dispositions in German, and now, much exhausted, he arrived at Kutuzov's. He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the commander in chief.
And they did indeed get somewhere, though not to their right places; a few eventually even got to their right place, but too late to be of any use and only in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this battle played the part of Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped assiduously from place to place, finding everything upside down everywhere.
"If he could attack us, he would have done so today," said he. "So you think he is powerless?" said Langeron. "He has forty thousand men at most," replied Weyrother, with the smile of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the treatment of a case.
He really was asleep. Weyrother, with the gesture of a man too busy to lose a moment, glanced at Kutuzov and, having convinced himself that he was asleep, took up a paper and in a loud, monotonous voice began to read out the dispositions for the impending battle, under a heading which he also read out: "Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805."
'But, my dear general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after military matters yourself! Yes... That was the answer I got!" Shortly after nine o'clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his plans to Kutuzov's quarters where the council of war was to be held.
Whether Dolgorukov and Weyrother, or Kutuzov, Langeron, and the others who did not approve of the plan of attack, were right he did not know. "But was it really not possible for Kutuzov to state his views plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that on account of court and personal considerations tens of thousands of lives, and my life, my life," he thought, "must be risked?"
Mollendorf brought up the right by a concentric movement to the heights of Siptitz, where he rejoined the king, whose line was thus reformed. The battle of Rivoli is a noted instance in point. All who are familiar with that battle know that Alvinzi and his chief of staff Weyrother wished to surround Napoleon's little army, which was concentrated on the plateau of Rivoli.
He asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had not clearly heard and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother complied and Dohkturov noted them down.
Langeron's objections were valid but it was obvious that their chief aim was to show General Weyrother who had read his dispositions with as much self-confidence as if he were addressing school children that he had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him something in military matters.
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